Can someone explain to me why its always the Giants and Tigers who publicly say their going to keep an eye on other teams free agents? I have never heard the other ten teams say they are going to keep an eye on the Giants or Tigers free agents. Is it their sense of entitlement? I think if the Buffaloes said they were going to keep an eye on Shinnosuke Abe the Giants would go ballistic.

The Giants and Tigers have so much more money than the bottom six or seven teams in NPB that they can sign their pick of the domestic free agents each year. They definitely have a sense of entitlement, since teams like Orix cannot compete in terms of the salaries they can offer to the best free agents.

Orix doesn’t threaten to keep an eye on players like Shinnosuke Abe because they’d sound ridiculous doing so. There is now way they can match Yomiuri on salary.